Hugh Jackman Walks Back His Potential Wolverine Retirement

Ben Rothstein/Twentieth Century Fox

Despite earlier comments about giving up the role, Jackman now says that he "can't see an end date" to playing the X-Man if the scripts remain high quality.

With X-Men: Days of Future Past opening to both critical praise and box-office success, you might wonder whether Hugh Jackman was rethinking his previous statement that his next appearance as Wolverine was likely his last. The answer, according to a recent interview, appears to be yes.

Telling New York magazine's Vulture that playing Wolverine is "still challenging and physically very challenging, more challenging," Jackman admitted that he gets "a great feeling of comfort going back to that character. Probably more than ever."

While confirming that he won't commit to the sequel to last year's The Wolverine currently in development unless the script is better than the last movie -- "There's no point in doing it if you're like, 'Eh, it's sort of there.' " -- he then added: "I want to make sure that there's still more for me to create, that I'm still as passionate about and committed to it and that the movies are as good. As long as all that lines up, I don't see an end date yet."

He went on, saying, "The truth is, right now, I would like to be able to continue playing it, but I probably have higher standards to get me there." Part of those higher standards, he admitted, was fixing what he called the "sloppiness" of the franchise. "There was never a knowledge that there was ever going to be seven movies and the whole thing moving forward," Jackman said. "We just did one and then the other, and then people would have different directors and go, 'All right, that was that, but now we're doing this,' and no overall sense."

That has changed with the return to the franchise of Bryan Singer, Jackman noted. "It feels like it's being redressed, and in this movie, it's OK! We worked out a way where we can now move forward with a fresh beginning." Well, as long as the script is good enough, of course.